I have broad interests and experience as a journalist, covering the auto business, the consumer-packaged goods industry, entrepreneurship, and others, as well as politics, culture, media and religion. I used to cover the car business for The Wall Street Journal, which nominated me and some colleagues for a Pulitzer Prize for our coverage of General Motors. I've also covered autos for Edmunds.com, AutoTrader.com, Automotive News and Advertising Age. I am a major contributor to Chief Executive Magazine, Brandchannel.com, Townhall Magazine, New Nutrition Business magazine and the Journal, among other outlets. I hope that having lived around Flyover Country for most of my life gives me a grounded perspective.

ELR Will Be Key To Re-Imaging Cadillac Under CMO Ellinghaus

Expect Cadillac to pivot pretty quickly to highlighting its ELR plug-in hybrid that’s due out next year. New CMO Uwe Ellinghaus believes the vehicle provides the key for the brand to solve the “relevance” issue he already has pinpointed after just a short time on the job.

Ellinghaus—who officially joins Cadillac on January 1 after a 14-year stint at BMW that included serving as head of brand strategy from 2010 to 2012—believes the key to elevating Cadillac in the accelerating premium-car wars in the U.S. and worldwide is the Tesla-fighter known as ELR.

“I see the biggest branding potential for Cadillac in ELR,” he said. While ELR shares its mechanical underpinnings with the ultimately prosaic and commercially disappointing Chevrolet Volt, Ellinghaus insisted that he could help make ELR more akin to the new BMWi electric-vehicle models.

The brand’s CTSCTS mid-size sedan was just named Motor Trend Car of the Year for 2013. Its ATS compact sedan is bringing some younger luxury buyers into the fold who wouldn’t have considered Cadillac before, and Caddy is due to introduce not only coupe and performance versions of the ATS next year but also a long-awaited new iteration of its flagship, the hulking Escalade SUV.

Furthermore, the general market for EVs — even really cool ones like the ELR — remains rocky. Tesla has proven that high-end all-electrics can find a robust niche, but its recent spate of fires may slow that brand’s bandwagon as well.

But Ellinghaus is determined to begin to ride the Cadillac ELR long in advance of its introduction, similar to how BMW did before the actual launch of its “i” models.

Is it possible such an effort could even involve a decision to tout the sleek upcoming model in an ad during Super Bowl XLVIII on February 2? If so, of course, that would have been a decision that predated Ellinghaus’s very recent arrival at GM.

In any event, Ellinghaus explained, “At BMW we said, ‘Let’s show that electromobility can be emotional and sexy,’ and Cadillac understood this as well” in developing the ELR and preparing it for launch in 2014. “Premium customers do not want what I call a ‘rolling declaration of sacrifices’ in their cars, as if they are willing to give up anything they like about a car as long as they’re driving emissions-free. There are cars in the market that work this way, and even some electrically powered cars that you think are deliberately designed to be ugly so the buyer can say, ‘I’m not into cars.’

“But the example of BMWi and Tesla shows that there is interest in fine cars that are EVs. And what I like so much about the ELR is that it is a very innovative car, and premium through and through in design, the interior, and finishing. Sure, the price is high, but it will find an audience that is looking exactly for a car that has wonderful range and fantastic emissions—and also has everything that makes a premium car fun to drive and meets their daily requirements.”

So while the other launches Cadillac has planned for next year will surely provide the brand with much higher-volume sales out of the gate, Ellinghaus said that he intends to throw a lot of brand-communications weight in 2014 behind the relatively low-volume ELR. The car’s cause could be hurt or helped by the short spate of undercarriage fires in wounded Tesla Model S cars lately.

ELR “will be the best lever to get people to think twice about Cadillac,” Ellinghaus said.

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